What's the FASTEST Motorcycle you have ever Mounted ?

My high school geology teacher drove a Mini van. His nickname was "Tiny" because he was 6'8" tall. He evidently chose a van body style because he could move the seat back about a foot beyond its normal range. It was a panel sided van so all you could see of him when driving was a pair of arms reaching from the back of the van to the steering wheel. He must have had lousy sideways vision out of the thing.
 
A VW opposed 4 EFI Van would not even do much more then 30 mph up the Hill's of the Cambrian Shield of the Great Lakes.
 
Franco58 said:
Never that fast on mine, but man was it fun once I sorted out the suspension issues!
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Indeed, Franco. Mine was a water bottle, which when stock were notorious weavers at 170+kms. Solved mine by using longer Konis on the rear (which also solved some of the ground clearance issues with the fat part of the expansion chambers). Full faring helped as well. Placed more weight on the front, to which I applied a valve kit from Trickit in the USA. Adapted from a dirt bike damping stack. Don’t think Trickit are even around any more. Had a mate with a hot 750 Kawa like your photo, but wasn’t quite as extreme as mine. Used to do side by side mono runs outside the tuning workshop :-) Book would be thrown at such activity these days. Mine was useless at city speeds - had to run first or second gear to have a usable power band. I remember a bloke in a Ferrari pulling up next to us one day - a coupe - and he looked over at us, beaming, and said “aaah, I love the smell of Castrol-R in the morning”.
 
Andy said:
There wasn’t really a whole lot of Indian left by then...
Quote from my old boss: “Imagine what he might have achieved if he’d started with something decent!”
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But the beauty of Bert is that DIDN'T start with something decent, and achieved insane results from his below par materials.
 
On Burt - yes and no. There were a couple of very clever engineers in the background in Invercargill who could answer questions he asked.
They might have shaken their heads sometimes at what he did but a core kept him pointed in the right direction. Or at least deterred him from the obvious stupidity.
Materials - Yes, pistons cast from used car ones aren't ideal. But rods hand carved from Caterpillar axles are in fact a pretty good answer to the question of where to find top quality steel.

I was "lucky" enough to witness one of his last outings at a records meeting in NZ. I wouldn't have ridden either the Indian or the Velo however much you paid me...

And if you went to a meeting at Teretonga with an attrractive girlfriend, you had to watch out for the old bugger. He'd try it on every time.
 
Hell no. Death and the movie made him famous. Prior to that it was infamy.

George Begg sums it up quite well in his book on Burt. He was at the AMC factory early 50's picking up a 7R prior to going to the IOM. He came around a corner and saw Burt in the distance. Ducked back out of sight to think about it.
Burt would undoubtedly want a lift to the IOM, sleep on the floor of their accomodation, drink their booze - and try to get off with any local women. And those were the pro's.
But he was a fellow Southlander so George came back out - and yes, it all came to pass as predicted.
 
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